The Little Things

The leaves she kicked up as she flew danced for a while before falling back down to the ground. They were dead and yet they danced; full of life even though their time had already come to pass. Not many would’ve noticed. Not many would’ve have cared. But she noticed, and she cared, because the little things made the big things. Without the little things, the big things just collapsed. And as those leaves twirled and spun, she saw the smallest of insects clinging to their dried-out skins, and even though the world paid no attention to such insects, she could see life where others saw only absence, and such delicate slithers of being made her see that even in the darkest of times, there was a reason to believe that these acts of being were a gift that needed cherishing above all else. The little things made the big things, and as those insects clung onto the leaves that fell upon the muddy ground, she thought about the blades of grass in the lawn of her grandparents’ old house, and the knives and forks they kept in their cutlery drawer she would polish with a napkin whenever she visited as a child. She thought of the cats that climbed the stairs to sit upon a sun-kissed bed in the spare bedroom and of the birds that would watch her sing through the window from their nests in the nearby trees. And then she thought about the squirrels that would hide their nuts in the back garden, and how she would follow them around stealing back those nuts to hang upon the branches of the trees with bits of sticky tape, and even though her family thought of her as strange, she believed such acts made the world a better place, and even though those moments were now gone, they had given birth to the woman who would be a bird who would be an orb who was flying straight into the heart of something altogether wonderful and strange.